The Right to Vote and Women in Government

Carey Mulligan (left) stars as Maud Watts and Anne-Marie Duff (right) stars as Violet Miller in director Sarah Gavron’s SUFFRAGETTE, a Focus Features release. Credit: Steffan Hill / Focus Features

Do you remember the first time you voted? I remember I was in college and felt so grown up that I was actually voting!   Below is a special video  called #MyFirstTime where celebs such as the Suffragette filmmakers and star Carey Mulligan, Kathy Baker (The Age Of Adaline, Edward Scissorhands), Trieste Kelly Dunn (“The Good Wife,” “Banshee”), Rosanna Scotto (WNYW Anchor), and more recall the first time they ever voted. It is a right that many women (and men) lost their lives to gain and one we shouldn’t take for granted.

So be sure to exercise your voice and be heard on Election Day!

(l-r.) Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff) and Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) campaign for women’s voting rights in director Sarah Gavron’s SUFFRAGETTE, a Focus Features release.

Credit: Steffan Hill / Focus Features

And here are the stars of the new movie Suffragette Cary Mulligan, Helena Boham Carter and Meryl Strep talk about Then and Now.

WOMEN’S FIRSTS IN POLITICS

• 1960 – Sirimavo Bandaranaike is the first woman head of government, serving as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.
• 1973 – Nancy Wechsler comes out as a lesbian while serving as a member of the Human Rights Party on the Ann Arbor City Council, making her the first openly LGBT person in political office.
• 1974 – Kathy Kozachenko the first openly gay or lesbian candidate to run successfully for political office in the United States, receiving a seat on the Ann Arbor, Michigan city council.
• 1979 – U.S. women’s suffrage leader, Susan B. Anthony is the first woman in America to be depicted on a coin.
• 1981 – Sandra Day O’Connor is confirmed as the first female Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
• 1990 – Antonia C. Novello is the first woman and the first Hispanic to hold the position of Surgeon General.
• 1993 – Janet Reno becomes the first female Attorney General of the United States.
• 1994 – Deborah Batts becomes the nation’s first openly lesbian African-American federal judge.
• 1996 – Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman to represent the U.S. in foreign affairs as the secretary of state.
• 1998 – Tammy Baldwin is the first openly lesbian woman elected to the U.S. Congress. She was also the first openly gay woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012.
• 2000 – Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes the first former First Lady elected into national office and the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from New York.
• 2007 – Nancy Pelosi is elected the first female Speaker of the US House of Representatives.
• 2008 – Hillary Rodham Clinton is the first woman to win a major American party’s presidential primary for the purposes of delegate selection. She is also the first woman to be an American presidential candidate in every primary and caucus in every state.
• 2009 – Janet Napolitano is the first woman to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security.
• 2009 – Sonia Sotomayor is the first Hispanic–American woman to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
• 2014 – Janet Yellen is the first woman chairperson of the Federal Reserve Board.
• 2015 – Loretta Lynch is confirmed by the Senate as the first African–American woman and second woman Attorney General.

Do you remember the first time you voted?